


Building Bridges (and Scandinavian Furniture)

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Arrow 4.5, Because it's me, F/M, Friendship, Post-break up Olicity, a bit of angst, season 4.5, speculation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8011495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arrow season 4.5 spec fic. In the aftermath of the shake-up of their team, post-breakup Oliver and Felicity attempt to find a new routine in the absence of their friends, with the help of some stubborn furniture from IKEA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Building Bridges (and Scandinavian Furniture)

**Inspired by this:**

                                                              

 

When Felicity had ordered a new bookcase for the loft - _her_  loft - because she needed somewhere to put her extra CDs and her computer science textbooks saved from college because she couldn’t bear to part with them, it had seemed like a simple, straightforward idea. 

Of course, she had ordered the aforementioned bookcase from IKEA, which meant it came flat-packed, and now she was clutching a screwdriver in one hand and muttering under her breath as she tried to decipher the instructions in the teeny-tiny print on the information pamphlet that came _with_  the flat-packed bookcase so that she could build the damn thing. 

She, Felicity Smoak, was not having much luck.

“Argh!” she yelled out in frustration after a minute or two of perusing the instructions. “This is impossible. You are impossible!” She waved the screwdriver threateningly in the direction of the bookcase. “Do you hear me? _Impossible!”_ Felicity sighed, fiddling with her ponytail in agitation. “And now I’m talking to my furniture. Excellent.”

Usually, she would ask someone to help her with stuff like this. If Captain Lance - well, she supposed he was just Quentin now, since the SCPD had fired him - had been around, she would have thought of calling him to see if he knew anything about DIY furniture. But the last message she’d had off her Mom had informed her they were touring the coast and had just stopped in Gotham for a few days so they wouldn’t have to sleep in a motel again, so Lance - _Quentin_  - was out of the question. 

Curtis was busy and, anyway, had once explained to her that he’d broken two fingers trying to put up a bookshelf and his and Paul’s first apartment, and Paul himself was a physical therapist, not a builder or a carpenter, and therefore equally clueless, so they were ruled out, too.

Thea was doing Mayor stuff (there was a _lot_  of paperwork that her brother couldn’t handle solely by himself) and since Diggle was away in the military, Lyla was held up with ARGUS and Laurel - well, Laurel would never be able to make herself available for help with things like this ever again - Felicity had run out of people to ask. 

Of course, there was always...

“No!” Felicity told herself, out loud, scolding herself for even _thinking_  of it. 

She could _not_  ask Oliver for help. 

Since her ill-fated attempt to treat him to lunch at Big Belly Burger a few weeks ago, she hadn’t put forward any other suggestions or offerings of goodwill or generosity to him. They were getting friendlier, easier and more comfortable around each other, but there was still a noticeable coolness between them that had Felicity’s insides twisting and squirming.

And with their friends gone - Digg, Roy, her mom, Quentin - and Laurel no longer with them, he’d been under a lot of pressure. She’d seen it in the tiredness around his eyes and the slump of his shoulders in the smart suits he always wore now since he was interim mayor. The stress of leading a city, mourning their losses, trying to rebuild the bunker into something usable and safe, being Green Arrow...it was getting to him. She could see it. She wasn’t blind and, well, she’d always known him better than he often knew himself. 

So calling him up in the middle of the afternoon because she needed help building a bookcase wasn’t a fair thing to do. 

It wasn’t.

For him...or for her.

Arbitrarily, she knew that it had been months since their break-up. Arbitrarily, she knew that it was stupid to lock herself away and never speak to him again (though she may have seriously considered it when the wound was still fresh and the anger still burned under her skin) and, arbitrarily, she knew that it was silly to keep him at arm’s length for so long. It had happened, it had been excruciatingly painful, but it was time to keep moving and be adults about it.

 _Wow, that’s..cold_ , Felicity thought to herself. _Am I being cold?_

Maybe at the start. But that was because she was hurt, and upset, and furious. She wasn’t those things anymore. Not entirely, at least. 

And it was _weird_ , not having Oliver in her life the same way he was before. It was strange being in this sort of limbo with him, neither outright good or outright bad. 

She was in love with him, still. It wasn’t the passionate, flaming kind of love she had felt before, when they had spent all those months on the road and later back in Star City, where they would have sex almost every night and itch to be around each other, to touch each other, kiss each other....no, this was a more subtle, penetrating kind of love. The kind of love that lived in her skin, her bones, her veins and nerves. It was as natural as inhaling oxygen in and exhaling carbon dioxide back out again. It was an easy kind of love that just _existed_ , real and true and beyond doubt. 

But she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t tell him anything. 

It wasn’t time. It wouldn’t be _right_. There was still so much unresolved between them, and the shake-up of their entire world just a month or so prior hadn’t made that any easier to deal with. In fact, it had pushed the question aside, in favour of more pressing issues, as personal grievances were made secondary to saving the city. 

But she really didn’t want to spend another three hours cursing at the bookcase and throwing various-sized screwdrivers across the room, so needs must. 

Felicity took a deep breath and reached for her cellphone. Two text messages from Curtis and a photo from her Mom - her and Captain Lance, _Quentin_ , standing in front of Wayne Tower in Gotham. She felt a niggling bite of jealousy in her gut when she saw how happy, how carefree they were. Quentin was paler, his hair grayer, but his smile just about reached his eyes where he stood with his arm around her Mom. 

It reminded her of how she and Oliver used to be. 

Which brought her back to the reason why she was currently staring at his name in her address book with a hammering heart and suddenly sweaty palms, telling herself, _Just_ do _it!_

She gritted her teeth and dialed the call. It rang - he hadn’t switched his phone off. That meant he wasn’t in a meeting or otherwise at anything particularly important that required his full attention. He was still putting being Green Arrow on the backburner for a short while because he was determined to be a good leader for the city. She admired his drive. 

It was one of the things she had loved, and did love, about him. 

“Hey!” Oliver’s voice sounded on the other end of the line a few moments later. “Is everything okay?” 

She could almost picture the way he would frown when he was concerned, the knot between his eyebrows above inquisitive eyes and his gaze serious, probing, searching for a problem that he thought might exist. 

“Yeah,” Felicity said, a little breathless, a little awkward. “Yeah. I just - you’re still good with your hands, right?”

“ _What_?” The jerky, semi-disbelieving laugh that comes from Oliver’s end of the phone is oh so familiar, but also oh so _embarrassing_.

“Oh! Oh, wow, I - didn’t mean to insinuate - I meant to ask - this was _not_  how I wanted this conversation to go.” Felicity slapped her hand to her forehead, screwing up her eyes and wrinkling her nose as she became fully aware of how totally _not in control_  she was. “I have a bookcase that I can’t put together and I know you’re good at building stuff so I wanted to ask for your...help.” 

“My help.” Oliver repeated. 

“Yes.” Felicity confirmed. 

“Because you can’t build your bookcase,” he continued, as if he didn’t quite understand her request. Or he was trying to find some other meaning in it. 

“Because I can’t build this damn bookcase that I’ve been staring at for two hours now and I want it done and out of the way so my floor isn’t covered in pieces of wood and tiny bags of nails for another month,” Felicity huffed, feeling her agitation grow once more. “I really want this thing out of the way and you’re the strongest and most...able guy that I know. You can build stuff. I can’t. So I’m asking for your help, if you, y’know, can. If you’re not too busy. Are you busy?”

“Uh, no. Actually I just finished up my last meeting and I was gonna stick around for a while to go through some old files but...” Felicity could almost _hear_  him fidgeting on the other end of the line, fingering a pen, shuffling papers, re-arranging the stapler he kept next to the _World’s Best Mayor_  mug she’d had made as a joke gift when he’d been sworn in. 

He cleared his throat distractedly. “I guess I could come by and see if I can give you a hand.” 

“Oh, great! You’d _really_  be helping me out here. I’m not really a DIY kind of person, except with computers. I can build you a computer in three days but wood and nails and hammers just...isn’t my thing. Obviously. You know that because, well, you know me. You’ve known me for five years, of course you have, why would you not know me after five years?”

“Felicity,” Oliver’s voice, calm and direct, came over the line and cut off her train of thinking out loud. It was _his_  way of saying her name, _Fe-li-ci-ty_ , drawing it out and putting extra attention on every letter and syllable. It made her heartstrings do a funny little dance in her chest, a twang and a jump and quick vibrations that left her momentarily breathless. “I would love to come and help you out.”

“Excellent!” was all she could squeak out. “I guess I’ll see you in ten then?”

“See you in ten,” Oliver affirmed, and then he was gone. 

Felicity’s first thought after hanging up the call was that she had nothing in her fridge to offer him when he came.

Well, there was coffee. She could make coffee. But coffee was what you made for professional working builders and carpenters, not friends. Ex-fiances. Ex-fiances who were now friends but it was still a little weird between you. 

She’d cross that bridge when it came to it. Maybe he’d had too much coffee that day and wouldn’t want another. That would solve the whole coffee-or-no-coffee conundrum. 

_Okay, I’m not allowed to think about coffee anymore._

She pushed her hand through her hair distractedly, shaking out the ends. She’d need to get it cut again soon, it was getting too long and the ends were curling up in a way that made her look like Medusa. 

Felicity started as a memory floated to the surface of her mind, almost before she was even aware of it. 

Her and Oliver, laying side by side in bed in their hotel in Positano, moonlight coming in through the gap in the curtains They weren’t talking, just lying opposite each other silently, drinking each other in. They hadn’t needed to say anything. Just being next to each other had been enough. Her hair was spread across the pillow like a blanket where she lay facing him, and he’d taken it upon himself to play with the curled ends of it, wrapping a lock around his finger like a ring before letting it go and taking up another. 

She quickly pulled her hands from her hair, squeezing them into fists at her sides. 

_No._

_No no no no no no no no._

Was it too late to call him back and tell him not to come? She would just ask a contractor to come instead. A completely harmless, professional contractor who she _didn’t_  still have feelings for and wasn’t _Oliver Queen_.

Unfortunately, a knock on the door made her jump, and she felt her heart quicken in her chest at the realization that Oliver had arrived. 

To help her with her bookcase. 

Because she had asked him to.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

Collecting herself, she went to open the door, hoping that her nervousness wasn’t completely obvious on her face. 

...and there stood Oliver, on the threshold of what used to be _their_  loft, in that stupid khaki t-shirt of his that always made her palms sweat and her face flush, and a pair of jeans that, right at that very moment, made him look like a runway model for Calvin Klein. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

“H-Hi,”Felicity said breathlessly. She was very aware that her cheeks were probably pink, her eyes slightly manic. _Focus_.

“Hey,” Oliver replied, softly. 

“Want to come - y’know, in?” Felicity asked. “Oh! How are you? I forgot to ask you that. It’s only polite, when, y’know, you get visitors, that you ask how they are..”

She saw the way his expression twitched on the word _visitors._ As if they were barely acquaintances. 

“I’m sorry,” she babbled. “This is weird.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Oliver shrugged. He sighed, shuffling from foot to foot, one large hand gripping the doorframe rather tightly, the knuckles turning white. “I don’t - I don’t want it to be.”

“Maybe we can - I don’t know - erase the past three minutes and start over?” Felicity suggested. “I - I just don’t really know how to deal with this.”

“For starters, I can help you build that bookcase you’re getting so frustrated about,” Oliver offered, a hint of a smile on his lips now. “Sound good?”

“Yeah,” Felicity breathed, nodding. “Yeah, it sounds good.”

“No pressure,” Oliver insisted. 

“No pressure,” she repeated. 

They looked at each other for a long while. She noticed that Oliver hadn’t shaved in a day or two, dark gold stubble lining his jaw. She remembered stroking it with her fingertips after a few too many margaritas, giggling at how prickly it was, and Oliver had laughed right along with her, amused by tipsy fascination. 

“So, uh, do you want some coffee? I can make you coffee,” Felicity said, “and then we can get to work.”

“We?” Oliver’s eyebrow rose, mirth in his eyes. “I thought you called me because _you_  needed help.”

Felicity flapped her hands distractedly, feeling the blush on her cheeks intensify. “Oh, you know what I meant.”

“We haven’t been a ‘we’ in a while,” Oliver said quietly. A simple comment, an observation, that meant so much more. 

“No,” she said, equally softly. “We haven’t. And I regret it.” When she saw the confusion on his face, she clarified, “I don’t want to freeze you out. I never intended to freeze you out, I could never....” She took a deep breath. “I could never pretend that you’re not my best friend, regardless of what’s happening or not happening between us. So,” she smiled, “do you want to come in?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Very much.”

“Well, come on in then, Mister,” she said, stepping back to allow him to move past her into the loft with a flourish of her arm.“Let’s see how you measure up to the _bookcase from hell_.”

Oliver chuckled. “Gladly,” and followed her in. 

It was a small thing. A minuscule thing. But it was nice, and good. And it made her think that maybe they could do this post-breakup-friendship thing. Little by little, they would grow closer again, and it wouldn’t be so bad anymore. 

She looked forward to when that time would come.


End file.
